Western Civilization

ON APRIL 18, 1521, a lowly monk stood before the

emperor and princes of the Holy Roman Empire in the

city of Worms. He had been called before this august

gathering to answer charges of heresy, charges that

could threaten his very life. The monk was confronted

with a pile of his books and asked if he wished to

defend them all or reject a part. Courageously, Martin

Luther defended them all and asked to be shown where

any part was in error on the basis of “Scripture and

plain reason.” The emperor was outraged by Luther’s

response and made his own position clear the next day:

“Not only I, but you of this noble German nation,

would be forever disgraced if by our negligence not

only heresy but the very suspicion of heresy were to

survive. After having heard yesterday the obstinate

defense of Luther, I regret that I have so long delayed

in proceeding against him and his false teaching. I will

have no more to do with him.” Luther’s appearance at

Worms set the stage for a serious challenge to the

authority of the Catholic Church. This was by no means

the first crisis in the church’s fifteen-hundred-year

history, but its consequences were more far-reaching

than anyone at Worms in 1521 could have imagined.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Christian church

continued to assert its primacy of position. It had

overcome defiance of its temporal authority by

emperors and kings while challenges to its doctrines

had been crushed by the Inquisition and combated by

new religious orders that carried its message of

salvation to all the towns and villages of medieval

Europe. The growth of the papacy had paralleled the

growth of the church, but by the end of the Middle

Ages, challenges to papal authority from the rising

power of monarchical states had resulted in a loss of

papal temporal authority. An even greater threat to

papal authority and church unity arose in the

sixteenth century when the unity of Christendom was

shattered by the Reformation.

The movement begun by Martin Luther when he

made his dramatic stand quickly spread across Europe,

a clear indication of dissatisfaction with Catholic

practices. Within a short time, new religious practices,

doctrines, and organizations, including Zwinglianism,

Calvinism, Anabaptism, and Anglicanism, were

attracting adherents all over Europe. Although

seemingly helpless to stop the new Protestant churches,

the Catholic Church also underwent a reformation and

managed to revive its fortunes by the mid-sixteenth

century. All too soon, the doctrinal divisions between

Protestants and Catholics led to a series of religious

wars that dominated the history of western Europe in

the second half of the sixteenth century.

Prelude to Reformation

Q FOCUSQUESTION: What were the chief ideas of the

Christian humanists, and how did they differ from

the ideas of the Protestant reformers?

Martin Luther’s reform movement was by no means

the first in sixteenth-century Europe. During the second

half of the fifteenth century, the new classical learning

that was part of Italian Renaissance humanism spread

to northern Europe and spawned a movement called

Christian or northern Renaissance humanism,

whose major goal was the reform of Christendom.

Christian or Northern Renaissance Humanism

The most important characteristic of northern Renais-

sance humanism was its reform program. Convinced

of the ability of human beings to reason and improve

themselves, the northern humanists thought that

through education in the sources of classical, and

especially Christian, antiquity, they could instill a true

inner piety or an inward religious feeling that would

bring about a reform of the church and society. For

this reason, Christian humanists supported schools,

brought out new editions of the classics, and prepared

new editions of the Bible and writings of the church

fathers. In the preface to his edition of the Greek New

Testament, the famous humanist Erasmus wrote:

Indeed, I disagree very much with those who are unwilling

that Holy Scripture, translated into the vulgar tongue, be

read by the uneducated, as if Christ taught such intricate

doctrines that they could scarcely be understood by very

few theologians, or as if the strength of the Christian reli-

gion consisted in men’s ignorance of it.... I would that

even the lowliest women read the Gospels and the Pauline

Epistles. And I would that they were translated into all

languages so that they could be read and understood not

only by Scots and Irish but also by Turks and Saracens

[Arabs].^1

Like later intellectuals, Christian humanists believed

that to change society, they must first change the

human beings who compose it.

ERASMUS The most influential of all the Christian

humanists was the Dutch-born scholar Desiderius Eras-

mus (dez-i-DEER-ee-uss i-RAZZ-mus) (1466–1536). Af-

ter withdrawing from a monastery, he wandered to

France, England, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, con-

versing everywhere in the classical Latin that might be

302 Chapter 13 Reformation and Religious Warfare in the Sixteenth Century

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